Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, this was an enlightening week in ds106.  Definitely had some opinions changed about a couple things.  I thought that the audio thing was going to be the hardest, most annoying process about all of this, especially because of my voice, but that was completely untrue.  This was actually my favorite week so far.

The first thing we looked at was the process of Radio storytelling in the Ira Glass Videos; Here’s part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 and Jad Abumrad from Radiolab.  That was a lot of hyperlinks at once.  They were interesting to watch, kind of intimidating, and I didn’t agree with everything they said about radio, but they did provide a nice look inside radio.  Taking a look at what they actually did gave me a different insight on some more of the things they said, but that’s for later.  It definitely gave me a good format on what to do for the radio broadcast and how everything should be put together.  The thing that I disagreed with most was that radio was an intimate interaction–not sure how you can be intimate with a radio… Anyway, here’s the rest of what I had to say.

For the other listening assignment, we had to listen to some of the radio pieces provided.  I chose “Words” on the Radiolab sight.  It was interesting.  You could tell that it was kind of cut and paste to put it together, and I felt that, in this case, the layering of sounds backfired, just my opinion.  It also wasn’t really what I expected for a radio show.  Here’s the rest of my thoughts.

The ds106radio listening wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it would be.  I tried at several points to listen to a live show, but was unsuccessful.  Fortunately, a group member of mine provided a link post-summary of my experience and I got to listen to a recording of a show that was live–not quite the same effect, but it was handy!  Honestly, I’m still not sure how to tell if it’s live.  Hopefully someone can help me out.

The Audio Assignments were my favorite part of this week.  I did my sound story in Audacity first.  This was fun.  Unfortunately, my first story wasn’t very clear, as commented by some friends.  However, since I had done the story early enough in the week, I managed to complete a second story that was clearer, I think.  The radio bumper definitely was not as challenging as the story, probably because I had a little experience with the process by then.  I did play around with Audacity a little more, trying out different buttons and things the program could do like amplify, voice removal, and fading in/out.  A very useful program.

For this week, I did Three Daily Creates.

This was my boring picture on an interesting surface.  I figured that the whole fun of jack o’lanterns was that they are on an interesting surface.

Here, I renamed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone to Harry Potter at the School of Gandalf.  I thought it was more accurate because in reality, Dumbledore and Gandalf are the same characters.  On top of that, Harry Potter takes almost all of the elements from the Lord of the Rings–highway robbery I tell you.

The last thing I did was the Acrostic Poem.  I don’t know why I chose slippers as opposed to anything else and I really didn’t spend much time on the lines.  You can figure out what it means–your guess is as good as mine.

Lots of feedback this week, on both twitter and the blog!  As I said earlier, I had the opportunity to change my five sound story to make another, stronger one the second time around.  I also added a little post of my own on the other group member’s blogs so I didn’t have to search through all the lists of things on the right of the main page–seemed to be a big hit!  Then of course Professor Levine gave me an even better solution of just putting them in the sidebar (my initial thought, but I couldn’t figure it out).  Also got a lot out of Twitter this week, even from people not in my class!  Here’s all the convos:

@rwyrough at present the metadata at ds106rad.io:8000 doesn’t update with a live connection info – but will soon

— Grant Potter (@grantpotter) February 6, 2013

A Little help with the radio!

@bellekid @rwyrough @cogdog The reason why is cause we are experimenting with hosting 400 accounts for this pilot. THings slip. Hold tight

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) February 6, 2013

I think the server for the blogs crashed at this point.

@bellekid @rwyrough @bparker5 @teldridge3 I wish I could find it. He is MIA. Forget him, use someone else in class, or mine.

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) February 7, 2013

And our infamous missing group member…

@rwyrough Don’t forget, blog comments are due tonight for our group.

— Nancy B. (@bellekid) February 9, 2013

And a helpful reminder to comment on the blog… Sorry I was so late Nancy!

I learned a lot this week, mostly about audacity.  Very cool program.  I had used it once before for another class but I was unaware of the power and all the capabilitites it held.  Before, I had only used it for interviewing someone and then transcribing everything they said–very tedious work.  I suppose my horizons were expanded on what a radio show could be with the Ira Glass Videos and then the RadioLab show.  I wish I had gotten a better handle on the ds106radio show though.  I have a feeling that’s going to bite me in the ass.

Go Ravens.